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The Mormon Church: Issue an official apology for racist teachings that declared Blacks cursed

I joined the Mormon Church when I was a youth growing up in Nashville. At the time, I didn’t know about the racist teachings by the Church that persisted until 1978. Nor did I realize that the Church had never apologized for those teachings. All I knew is that these were kind and giving people who helped me establish my relationship with God and seemed to be putting me on a path toward success. It wasn’t until I was serving a mission in my early 20’s when I met an African American man who challenged me to question the racist ideas and past teachings of the Mormon faith that had once declared that I was cursed.

While most Christian churches relied heavily on racist inclinations about Blacks as an accursed and stigmatized group who fell out of favor with God to justify their enslavement, the Mormon Church took this one step further. They taught that the origins of the curse began with Cain for having committed the world’s first murder against his brother, Abel. Though there is no scripture to support this claim, LDS faithful believed that the curse placed on Cain by God was the skin of blackness. Additional dogma was also created in the LDS Church on why Blacks were banned from Mormondum, but these differing interpretations were nothing more than racist creations to serve as justification of bigotry. Over time, when various Christian-based white churches began to distance themselves from the racist rhetoric and teachings of their faith, the LDS Church remained steadfast in its persistence of racist folklore well beyond the Civil Rights era.

What is even more egregious is that despite ending the ban on Blacks in the priesthood in 1978, the Mormon Church has yet to issue a formal apology on matters of race and their mistreatment of Blacks. While the Catholic Church and other Protestant based faiths—Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Southern Baptist, Lutheran—have since made peace with their racist past and issued public apologies for their role in slavery, Jim Crow racism, and their participation in the mistreatment of African Americans at the hands of misguided Christians, the LDS Church remains unshakable, convinced that its policy was divinely sanctioned by God and that no such apology is needed.

Our goal is to get the Mormon Church to apologize for its racist actions and teachings, just as other faith-based traditions have apologized. This is necessary is to disprove the prevailing notion that God “had His reasons” why humans denigrated and discriminated against other human beings based on race. When the Church refuses to give an apology, it leaves its millions of members left to question whether this was really God’s will rather than human racist actions. A recent online survey revealed that the majority of Mormons no longer believe that Blacks were cursed, but most of them still continued to hear these teachings in their church. Black Mormon members in the survey overwhelmingly asked for a public, unambiguous apology.

Like most of us, I’m hoping to leave this world a better place for our children. I am not cursed. And I certainly don’t want my children growing up thinking or even hearing that they were cursed. Please join me in asking the Mormon Church to issue an official, public apology for their role in racism. Click here to sign the petition.

8 Comments

Oct31

T Griswold

I am not a Mormon myself, but worked in the Special Collections vault of the University of Utah library. I worked on many rare and valuable collections from early Mormon Pioneer History. I am very familiar with the history and origin of the LDS Church. Mormons are often criticized about not allowing blacks to have full membership in the Church until the late 1970s and many groups claim the Mormons are among the most racist for that reason. However, to be fair, I would like to point out that the early Mormons were always very opposed to slavery. Mormonism was founded decades before the Civil War and most early Mormons lived in Illinois and Missouri. The Missouri Mormons were hated in large part because they were anti-slave and Missouri was a slave state at that time. Slave owners in Missouri were threatened by the growing population of anti-slave Mormons. This was one reason why the Mormons living in Missouri in the mid-1800s were exterminated (i.e. murdered, homes burned, and ultimately driven out of that state). This is why the Mormons fled and eventually ended up in Utah. So, I find it ironic that the Southern Christians bash Mormons for being racists when the Mormons were the ones opposed to slavery, and they actually owned slaves. Food for thought…

T Griswold- I know that is the common idea but that was before the PH ban. Joseph Smith actually did ordain black men, it was not until later that the horrible stuff came out in droves and was made into theology. Utah was the only western terriotry to allow slavery. That is not very positivehttp://www.jstor.org/stable/272985

I stumbled across your open letter dated 2006 to the Mormon church regarding its racist teachings. And I just came across this post issuing another demand for an apology. Since you have been demanding an apology for the past few years, I am wondering if the Mormon church has responded or have you been completely ignored?

An apology would not only be nice, an apology…a complete and full repudiation of the practice is needed if the church is to grow past it’s past mistakes. At a Salt Lake Area temple opening a few years ago 2 Apostles (Ballard and Cook) gave an unprecedented interview with ABC news. When asked why Elder Ballard stated he felt people judges the church unfairly. Asked to define that he stated in part that people see the church as racist “still”. The church needs to clean up it’s own mess rather than continue to lay it on God’s doorstep as though He were the author of this mess.

we know already that such enculturated or ‘ideological’ rationales for patterned, racialized oppression of black bodies as a group are the affinal fit for their group positions in political economy; in an eastern context, karma is the tool by which various forms of oppression are justified in the minds and hearts of the powerful and the powerless alike. the ‘Hamite descent’or ‘Caininite legacy’ of the ‘accursedness of blackness’ is still around, and not just extant in Mormon traditions. thankfully, we seem to be evolving slowly beyond these kinds of archaic structures.

Blacks Ridiculed again by the Mormon Church
By Lee B. Baker, Former Mormon Bishop

For several years now, every Tuesday evening I have had the great privilege of addressing the Christian and Mormon listeners of Worship FM 101.7 in Monrovia, the capital City of Liberia, West Africa.

I have come to know several of the station managers and a number of the more frequent callers to the weekly program. Through their comments, questions and photographs, I have been genuinely moved to see the application of their unyielding faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Over the past few months the question of racist teachings in the Book of Mormon and from the past Leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been on the minds of the Liberian converts to Mormonism and the many true Christians who struggle to understand how such a Church can be growing in Africa.

I believe the answer is relatively simple; it has been the perfect merging of a sincere lack of knowledge on the part of the Mormon converts and a disturbing lack of accountability on the part of the Mormon leaders. A near total lack of knowledge across Africa specific to some of the more explicit teachings found within the Mormon Scriptures, principally that Black Skin is a representation of wickedness and even less information concerning the racism and bigotry openly and officially taught by the early Leadership of the Mormon Church. This combined with the current Church Leadership’s inability to clearly and specifically reject its own racist teachings both in print and from its past Senior Leadership, has left the Black Race with only a short irresponsible and offensively juvenile Official Statement that claims the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints knows very little about its own race-based policy that had lasted for well over 100 years:

“It is not known precisely why, how or when this restriction began in the Church, but it has ended.”

Maintaining a detailed and comprehensive history of every aspect and teaching of the Church has been both one of the hallmarks and one of the downfalls of Mormon Church. Within the relatively young Church, authoritative documentation, however corrupt it may have been, has never been in short supply. Each of the Senior Leaders of the Mormon Church has had several official biographers as well as an army of Church authorized historians to record for the faithful Mormon all facets of the History of the Church. In fact, one of my first of many “Callings” in the Mormon Church was that of a Ward (Congregational) Historian, long before I became a Bishop.

The peculiar assertion that the Mormon Church itself does not know the details of its very own race-based policy of restricting the Blacks from holding the Priesthood is tremendously embarrassing for all Mormons and exceptionally degrading for anyone who actually believes it.

As a former local leader of the Mormon Church, I have repeatedly assured the African members of the Mormon Church that the documents and “Scriptures” I have read to them over the air are both Authorized and Official for the time period they are relevant to. I clearly state the current position of total acceptance of all Races by the Church, but I must highlight the fact that the Book of Mormon still carries it’s obviously racist message that dark skin was a curse and Jesus was white. I have said many times on-air that like the Mormon Missionaries, I too believe that every African should have a copy of the Book of Mormon, if only to learn the truly racist teaching of the Mormons.

I have and will continue to teach the African Nations from the authentic Mormon Scriptures and the Church History documents, which I had purchased from the Mormon Church to know my past responsibilities as a Mormon Bishop. The official records of the Mormon Church include many jokes and sermons given within the Official Semi-Annual General Conference of the faithful Mormons, using the “N-word”, Darky and Sambo. Additionally, these Church published books record nearly 100 graphic sermons and lessons that clearly teach the principle, practice and policy that Black Skin was, is and will remain forever the Curse of Cain.

Only in the recent past has the “Complete History” of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints come to the attention of its own membership, much less to the under developed regions of the world. As this information is discovered, an ever increasing number of members of the Mormon Church have come into a personal crisis of faith, most notably Elder Hans Mattsson of Sweden, a General Authority of the Mormon Church who has gone public with his doubts and questions.

Not unique to Africa, has been the Mormon Church’s training of young Missionaries to strictly avoid any discussion of several of the more embarrassing, yet true, teachings of the 183 year old Church. Chief among these subjects has been Polygamy and Blacks and the Priesthood.

With the smooth talent of a skilled politician, the Mormon Church has ended its Official Statement with the following hypocritical and deceitful, but technically accurate quote:

“The origins of priesthood availability are not entirely clear. Some explanations with respect to this matter were made in the absence of direct revelation and references to these explanations are sometimes cited in publications. These previous personal statements do not represent Church doctrine.”

As a former Mormon Bishop and member of the Mormon Church for over 32 years, let me be of some help with the translation of this very carefully crafted message. The two key noteworthy phrases are: “in the absence of direct revelation” and “These previous personal statements do not represent Church doctrine.”

I will address the most obvious first, clearly the “previous statements” from the Church and its Leadership “do not” represent the Church doctrine today. The policy was reversed in 1978 and there is no question as to the policy today. The hypocritical deception is that between 1845 and 1978 those “statements” did, very much “DID” not “DO” represent past Church doctrine. Yet, I do give full credit to the clever Mormon authors and editors for their most skillful use of the English language.

And finally, the most revealing and enlightening statement from the Mormon Church is: “in the absence of direct revelation”. So then, it is incredibly true and accurate that without any mockery or sarcasm; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had for nearly 100 years, restricted a significant portion of the human race, millions and millions from God’s intended blessings of Eternal Marriage, Salvation and even Godhood, without knowing why they did it, all without “direct revelation”?

This Official Statement of religious shame and embarrassment comes from the Headquarters of a Church that claims to be guided in all things by “direct revelation”. How then, did such an exclusive doctrine based on prejudice, bigotry and racism become so accepted, so authoritative, so convincing and so commanding for so long, without “direct revelation”?

As a former Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I give testimony that what they have stated is true, in that, they are racist and do not hide the History of the Church from its members or the public, this, their Official Statement on Race and the Church demonstrates that fact.

I believe that the truly wicked teachings as well as the repulsive history of the Mormon Church concerning Polygamy, Polyandry, Blood Atonement, and Blacks and the Priesthood is available for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

It is my prayer that all Mormons and non-Mormons will come to know the true history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That every man, woman and young adult on the earth today will find the time to read the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price from cover to cover to see the deception they hold, and then… read the Word of God with the eyes of a child, and follow the true Jesus, the true Christ found only in the Bible.